Up to now, the staple of mobile marketing has been SMS messaging, a channel traditionally used for below-the-line marketing purposes. But mobile is about to become the next battleground for above-the-line campaigns as consumers spend increasing amounts of time on their smartphones and apps create opportunities for creative campaigns.

Rather than looking at traditional SMS messaging, brands and retailers are jumping into mobile messaging using apps like Snapchat and WhatsApp as platforms to create a more immersive and narrative-driven marketing experience.

“Consumers are spending a lot of time on these free mobile messaging apps, but the marketing opportunities are just starting to open up,” says Julian Smith, global head of strategy at mobile marketing agency Fetch. “So it’s quite a challenge, as WhatsApp has always said it doesn’t want to accept advertising, but others are more content rich and offer better brand opportunities.” Read more at CMO.com

Tinder’s changing algorithm will boost matches by 30%. What if that same logic was applied to the retail industry?

Last week, we were at Web Summit in Dublin listening to a talk from Tinder CEO Sean Rad about dating.

What does that have to do with retail trends you might ask?

Well it got us thinking, if a dating app like Tinder can edit its algorithms to increase the number of matches by 30%, based only on whether its users have swiped yes or right, imagine what fashion retailers can do with all of the information they have about their customers.

While Rad wouldn’t reveal how many users the dating app currently has, he did reveal some extraordinary metrics on Tinder’s use.
There are, he said, 1.5m real-life dates taking place between Tinder users every week, with one million of those being a first dates.

Over half of all first dates end in a second date.

Web Summit reminded us that if you were to apply this kind of logic to the fashion industry, the possibilities are endless.

Google data analyst Olivier Zimmer said that the company is using search data to help its customers make better decisions about fashion trends.

By looking at search demand patterns, geographic data, and co-search behaviour, Google is able to get a sense of what trends are taking off.